updated 08:55 pm EST, Fri February 16, 2007

Jobs, Dell share stage

Last week it was the music labels, this week it was teacher unions. Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs on Friday spared no words in criticizing the state of public schools and the teacher unions, saying that schools were never likely to improve until principals could fire bad teachers. The Associated Press notes that Jobs shared the stage with rival CEO Michael Dell to deliver their vision of technology in classrooms. Jobs, who is known to be quite intolerant of what he calls incompetence at his own company, touted a text-book free classroom, but reiterated that no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.

The report says that Jobs' words were quite strong, noting that the Apple and Pixar CEO "lambasted" teacher unions and likened schools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs. Teacher unions, he said, that the unions have directly contributed demise of public education.

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" he asked. "Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.'"

Jobs' comments reportedly drew loud applause during an education reform conference, but while Jobs' comments seemed to be drawing support from the crowd, Dell's CEO, who has previously taken swipes at Apple, sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap.

Jobs, however, continued despite the potential repercussions faced the Cupertino-based company when negotiating future California contracts.

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said. "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

"Apple just lost some business in this state, I'm sure," Jobs admitted.

Dell, who recently took back the reins as CEO of Dell, responded that unions were created because "the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good.

"So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won, they do really well and succeed."

The report says Dell also blamed problems in public schools on the lack of a competitive job market for principals.

Previously, Jobs outlined his vision for textbook-free schools in the future, the report said. Textbooks, he claimed, would be replaced with a free, online information source that was constantly updated by experts, much like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

"I think we'd have far more current material available to our students and we'd be freeing up a tremendous amount of funds that we could buy delivery vehicles with - computers, faster Internet, things like that," Jobs said. "And I also think we'd get some of the best minds in the country contributing."

Right On

Teaching Yesterday

We have proposed a WIMax system for the county that could fund for free a labtop andd home internet for every student in the county. The county said "no" because they already had an IT department that did not know how to accept it. Instead they bought two sets of text books so that no one had to carry a big backpack.
Such stupidity.

teaching IT...

to find the door tomorrow.

What is it with our brainiac IT departments in government? They either shith-can your idea because it doesn't spring from their own gray cells or they simply show their utter incompetence by allowing great projects like this to die.

Teachers Pay

Anyone who challenges that teachers are underpaid has their head in the sand.

My signature is 'iselljuice'. Juice is slang for interest.

I sell interest by way of the mortgage bank I run.

We do MANY mortgages for teachers, counselors, administrators and the like.

We are in the Chicago area.

With 5 years experience, the average teacher out here makes 45,000 per year and, and this is INDISPUTABLE, get's more days off per calendar year than they work.

In addition to this, IL teachers have a pension plan that vests them at 5 years (not fully of course) but at 25 years they retire with 90% of their last year's pay AND the current contract has a 3% cost of living adjustment.

Teachers on state pensions are not required to place money into Social Security - like the rest of us, and with the money they forego in this plan, they get one of the greatest pension plans of all time.

It is a regular occurance for us to do loans for teachers with 15 years experience who are pulling down very close to six-figures without an advanced (beyond BA/BS) degree. Again, this is doing so in a job that provides for massive days off.

Teaching is NOT a poverty based profession. Anyone who states as much has a massive disconnect with reality.

iselljuice

Everything you said is correct.

Jobs was right, but he's a regular supporter of the left through campaign donations to bigwig politicians who are in the pocket of the teacher's union. So, as righteous as he was in saying what he said, how can he not see the hypocrisy of giving millions of dollars to the jerks who empower the teachers' unions? Wake up Jobs... or rather... listen to yourself more carefully!

Solution to the education system? Unfettered competition and a little something called the profit/loss system.

A Teacher's Perspective

It is VERY possible to fire negligent and/or incompetent teachers... but it requires a little extra effort from the school's administrator. Principals need to document inappropriate or ineffective behaviors exhibited by the teacher to ultimately result in the teacher being fired. It happens much more often than people think.

Also, regarding pay for teachers, I'm not sure how teachers in the Chicago area are compensated, but here near Philadelphia, PA, we are not compensated that well. In my district, a wealthy suburban district, the pay scale tops out at approximately $80,000 for a teacher who has a master's degree, 30 graduate credits beyond a master's degree, and at least 15 years of service in that district. Regarding our retirement, we do pay into our retirement. I pay 8% of my income to the Pennsylvania retirement system in addition to social security, which Pennsylvania teachers are required to pay.

Regarding days off per year, I know of very few teachers who truly take the summer off. Most of us get part time jobs during the summer for supplemental income. Teachers near Chicago may be rich, but I'm not! Luckily, I LOVE my job and wouldn't trade my career for any other.

One last thought... most teachers only remain teachers for 8 years. If teaching is so easy, full of benefits, and high paying, why don't people stick with it? Just something to think about.

One other thing...

Some people in parts of the US will see the number $80,000 and think it is really high. Please remember that the cost of living on the east coast is very high compared to the middle states. Also, that monetary figure is for very experienced teachers with a strong educational background. If a teacher is unwilling to go beyond his/her bachelor's degree, their salary will never exceed $53,000 per year.

unions aren't bad per se

...but its their demands and how they operate that are misguided. I think teachers do need the kind of protection and representation a union can provide, but they make it all too difficult to eliminate not only the teachers that are negligent and/or incompetent, but those who really care more about the paycheck than their students education.

I have no qualms with teachers making $80,000+ per year... frankly, they should probably make more. But the public school systems won't improve if teachers are paid a bundle despite their performance in the classroom. Simply put, teachers who perform well should be paid well. Those who don't perform well should be fired. When it comes to educating our children, there should be no compromises.

Nonsense

What errant nonsense. Statements like these that are backed by an absence of facts should be embarrassing to people, but for some reason they aren't. Studies have shown that it's not the quality of the school so much that indicates how well a student will do but, rather, whether the student (and, likely, the student's parents) make success in school important.

American culture, it seems to me, places little value on education and even less on science education. But then we live in a nation where about half the population doesn't believe in evolution despite the enormous amount of evidence in its favor. And the president says to "teach the controversy" even though there is none. Is it any wonder that students don't really take school all that seriously?

There are probably problems with teachers that could be improved, but shouldn't the effort to fix things be directed in areas where it can make the most difference?

Disclaimer: I'm not a teacher, but I'm the son of two and the brother of a third. Teachings not a bad life if you can hack it. I'd be a lousy teacher and, besides, the money's a lot better in industry.

hi, i was actually there

the ap is clearly trying to make the event more sensational than it really was in order to make it fit with job's controversial media image.

both dell and jobs gave nice talks about technology and education, which was the bulk of their program, then took questions. both were pressed to give their views on the future of education and how to improve education. after both said a few words (reiterating earlier remarks), they were pressed on the topic again. finally, since the question kept coming up, steve prefaced his remarks by saying that what he was about to say was going to get him in trouble and then he talked about schools in california (where his kids go to school and which are strongly unionized) as small businesses with parents as the customers and the principal as ceo, etc..

the ap also seems to have conveniently left out the part of job's statement where he said principals, along with the power to fire more easily, also needed the power to reward and retain good teachers (just as he and dell reward/retain their best engineers) and to hire more new teachers.

also, keep in mind that he said all of this to an education conference in texas--which is a strong right-to-work (non-union) state--not knowing that we really don't have teachers unions here. (apple did not lose any business in texas over this--i assure you.)

the ap also seems to have missed ross perot's remarks, which were typical perot (insightful, but a bit crazy and politically incorrect), as well as senator kay bailey hutchison's remarks, where she bascially patted herself on the back for getting so many research earmarks (that's pork-barrel dollars in DC speak) for texas universities.

Business ≠ Educatio

Funny. Business people talking about how to run schools. Seriously, stick to Apple and business Jobs. You're no teacher. Schools should never be run like businesses. Any good teacher knows that.

There's blame to go around, but if you want to find the most responsible for the poor state of our schools, look at the state and federal administrators who are totally out of touch with the classroom and insist on teaching for tests instead of testing for real knowledge, not the teachers who are paid lower than almost any other professional and expected to work long unpaid hours after school day in and day out. Please.

Lets make sure

And. . .

First, Jobs did not knock a teacher's salary. So, I am unsure how this came up. He only said it should be easier to fire teachers who are not performing well.

Second, whether teachers are overpaid or not probably depends on where you live. However, in Michigan, the State with the worst economy, many public teachers are pulling in north of $70, 000 year. That is well above the State average salary. Moreover, they get three months out of the year off.

Finally, a Teacher Union's interest is not children, but the teacher's own well being. For instance, teacher's were opposed to the whole school voucher system because it put their own employment at risk.

Keep in mind I support unions when they are fighting for something good.

Another thought

Terrin,

You make some interesting points. I have a few questions though... My first question is about the many public teachers pulling in over $70,000 per year. How many of those teachers have advanced degrees? If a teacher with a bachelor's degree is getting $70,000 per year, I agree that he/she is overpaid. However, a person with advanced degrees in education (or any field) deserves additional compensation that reflects his/her knowledge level and expertise. Most teachers choose to go to graduate school because it allows them to become better teachers. I think if you take this into account and compare the salaries of teachers with other white collar occupations that typically involve graduate degrees, you'll notice that teachers are typically paid less. To some degree, this makes sense because we get approximately 6-7 weeks off during the summer (Not 3 months!!) During several of those weeks, most teachers are in their classrooms preparing for the next year.

I do agree with you that teacher unions are not solely concerned with the children. Luckily, the teachers are concerned about the students, as are the children's parents.

Back to the topic... I agree with Jobs and Dell that technology should be infused into curriculum, but it should supplement instruction, not replace it. I have a hard time seeing an elementary student using wikipedia to learn about different topics. The language is far too complicated for their reading skills. People are the best teachers, not computers. By people, I mean teachers, parents, grandparents, and community members.

Its not pay....

Its not the teacher's pay we are disputing, its the unions. One of our local unions went on strike, the students could not go to school. This was for a handful of teachers, most I spoke with were against the strike but could do little and of course they supported the initiators but were impartial to the benefits they were after.

Yes

I couldn't agree more. I graduated high school in 2003, and I DEFINITELY noticed that the teachers union was a powerhouse that corrupted my education. I've never heard anyone else speak out against it, and I am in full support of this criticism.

jobs on education

The idea that textbooks ought to be replaced by something that Steve Jobs' company just happens to sell every part of -- doesn't that strike you as a little self serving? I think Steve Jobs ought to try teaching some classes for a little while himself; I bet you anything he'd find out pretty doggone quick that it isn't actually all that difficult or uncommon for a bad teacher's sorry 455 to be fired right on outta there.

As a university

professor, I can emphatically say that US schools are doing a terrible job. Though teaching to a test is a huge problem, there are things that pass through our public educational system which are shameful (why is it that 90% of college freshmen don't know the difference between "their," "there," and "they're?" - amongst many other things) and that has everything to do with the lack of accountability in the teachng system.

In other words, I WOULD NEVER SEND MY CHILD TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL IN AMERICA because of the fact that there is no accountability in the teaching profession. Bad teachers continue to teach and there is little recourse to reward good teachers and punish bad ones. All are seen as equal according to their contracts (which are negotiated by unions), and that hurts the entire system. A bad salesman can get fired at the drop of a hat; why shouldn't a bad teacher?

For those who are interested, John Stossel filed a very interssting report called "Stupid in America" about his very subject (the lack of competition in schools) which can be viewed at http://youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA

Every American should view this program and take his findings to heart.

the trouble with educatio

is that it gets reduced to 'results' which means sweatshops and teaching to the test instead of what most teachers want to do - to enrich students' lives. This means in practice that the 'best' teachers results-wise can be the worst teachers, enrichment-wise and vice versa. Check out the 'Lake Wobegon' effect where everyone gets above average marks because of the way you file results and teach to the test. Education is NOT a business world and business people always seem to think they can charge in and 'fix' things. But teachers don't pretend to advise computer companies on their best way to proceed. So these comments were inappropriate and based on ignorance.

Missing the point

Those discussing teacher salaries here are missing the point. NO ONE is against GOOD teachers being paid WELL. The issue is, how can you insure that public funds allocated for education actually end up creating better education? Jobs is making the point that if you could insure that good teachers are rewarded and poor teachers were penalized (like in every other profession) this would go a long way toward raising the quality of education. THIS IS INDISPUTABLE. However --- you can't. Why. Go do some research on the NEA. Until this problem is solved (and I don't see any way to do so at the moment) don't expect much change in the quality of education regardless of how much money you throw at it.

The point isn't being ...

missed. Quite the opposite. I just don't think that people have really thought the idea through enough to see that it would not work well. Many lawmakers have toyed with the idea of rewarding/penalizing teachers based on student performance. Ultimately, this would not work well because SO many factors are outside of a teacher's control that he/she can not guarantee good results. I can't force a child to get 10 hours of sleep every night. I can't ensure that a child eats 3 healthy meals everyday. I can't force children to read at home (although I do assign it for homework.) I can't limit my students' television time to under 2 hours per day. Why should I be penalized (or rewarded) when so many factors are out of my control?

I can be the most dedicated and hard working teacher in the country, but if I teach in an underfunded inner-city school with low parental involvement, my children are statistically destined to perform worse academically than students from richer school districts that have a high level of parental involvement. I just get tired of hearing people blame the teachers. It seems that EVERYONE blames the teacher if the students don't perform well. A few years ago, one of my students told me that his dad told him about our state's standardized test. His dad said, "The test is to see how well your teacher is teaching." I said that his dad was partially right, but what if all of the other students performed well and he didn't? He seemed quite surprised.

When is the student accountable? When are the parents accountable? When is the school board accountable? MOST teachers already feel accountable for their students' performance. We don't need lawmakers or businesspeople to help stir these feelings.

OK... I'm off my soapbox. If you can't tell, I'm very passionate about this topic.

@sable93

The point is being missed, even by you. You write, "I just get tired of hearing people blame the teachers. It seems that EVERYONE blames the teacher if the students don't perform well." At no point did Jobs in his statement blame teachers, but teachers unions.

I will agree completely that there are other factors which are equally as important as the quality of teachers. The entire system is broken, and it cannot be fixed until the government no longer has a monopoly on education in the US. A system which necessitated unions, but also one which has let itself become taken over by them.

What we're forgeting...

What we're forgeting is that:
-the university system is no longer accepting just the elite. Many people of average and even slightly below average intelligence are going to college now due to the decline of the vocational system due to the stigma of an honest day's labor. Everyone wants to be a pediatrician.

-we educated everybody, even other countries citizens (in my school about 20% or more are undocumented) and are still only about 8% behind the "best" nations in test scores. Not too shaby figuring they start tracking and removing below average IQ students into their vocational programs. Although many bemoan this due to the American ideal of everyone having a fair shot, a lot of our kids are making it our of high school without any real job skills and marginal "high school" skills in math, literacy and in the sciences. Why? Sometimes simply because of low IQ, sometimes due to familial circumstances.

We, as an educational system are doing a helluva job educating the entire population in the face of all of the life circumstances many of our students face.

...and one more thing...

In 95%of the cases of students succeeding, they have very active, motivated parents enforcing school rules and making sure their kids do their homework, get good grades, etc., etc.

The kids that are doing poorly generally have no parental support AT ALL and are going it alone at 16. Perhaps parents (and I am one) should be held accountable when their kids enter kindergarten without the ability to properly operate a book. Or maybe someone should ask them why they call their student in weekly because their son/daughter didn't feel like getting up in time that morning. Proper parenting would go much further than disbanding teacher unions, increasing high-stakes testing mandates or rewarding/punishing teachers.

1 HUGE Point

I think that everyone (well mainly Jobs) is missing a critical point here. Well to preface, there are bad teachers, always have been and always will be...and there are dedicated teachers....now Job's argument is that there are so many qualified and motivated teachers (that would change the entire educational system) desperately waiting to get into the classroom to get paid a starting salary of $32000 a year....but the only problem is they can't because all these other "bad" teachers are there that we can't fire. What a bunch of BS. We are always in need of good teacher and better pay and better preparation for becoming a teacher. If you just fire all the crappy ones, who will fill these jobs? There is no line around the corner of people waiting to work at most of our schools. Were already putting VERY unqualified people in the classrooms (oh you speak Spanish, then I'm sure you'll be a good Spanish teacher) with emergency credentials just so that the classroom will have a teacher. Jobs really missed the boat on this one and I think that he will pay if this blows up.

Jobs is right*

One comment said from first hand knowledge of the talk that Steve was talking about CA public schools. If so, his comments were completely on target.

There was a very real effort to reform education in 2005, making the probationary period longer (it's just 2 years now, a national low), allowing incentives and merit pay but the unions spent over $100 million in dues, loans and even mortgaged property to defeat the reforms often through misinformation.

CA's public employee unions are out of control and not at all interested in quality education or performance. Union dues in CA are required even from non-union employees under the claim the union's bargaining effects that employee's compensation package too.

There were infamous cases of terribly performing teachers being impossible to fire. At best, they get moved around within the district. There have also been instances of teacher intimidation by union officials and an effort to eliminate the secret ballot when it comes to union membership votes.

CA teachers are often well paid, perhaps overpaid with at least one district I know of in Southern CA starting teachers at $50,000.

True, teachers aren't the only cause of poor education but they are one key element from which taxpayers should demand excellence, measurable performance, accountability. We and our children are owed a focus on fundamentals rather than experiments in social engineering.

As a society we need to give up this recent myth that college is the answer for everyone. Vocational training is an important, viable and noble pursuit for many, perhaps even most, students.

don't need computers

What they need to do is "vote out" the worst behaved 5% of the students. These students cause 95% of the problems and are why the schools can't do more. Multimedia technology is not needed to learn. The only reasons students should be using computers in the classroom is to learn how to program, how to network comouters, and how to fix them. What is typically done is word processing and games. Even graphic design education is a waste of time considered how few paying jobs there are in that field left unfilled. I know it is unsexy, but they need to learn how to read, write, and do math before they learn anything else, and get rid of the students that don't want to be there and stop forcing them to learn. You cannot make someone learn who doesn't want to.

private school not better

"I WOULD NEVER SEND MY CHILD TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL IN AMERICA" Just because a school is private, does not mean it is better. Most private schools pay the teachers much less and have much less competent teachers. These private schools are not required to have their students pass the same test as those in public education. If they did take tests, the results would surprise you. The more students who go to private school, the less will go to public shools, and public schools will lose more money and continue to get worse.

np parent involvement

"I can be the most dedicated and hard working teacher in the country, but if I teach in an underfunded inner-city school with low parental involvement, my children are statistically destined to perform worse academically than students from richer school districts that have a high level of parental involvement."

This is very true. The teachers have little influence compared to the parents, and it is not suprising that low income distruicts do worse on their tests. If you are going to fire all these teachers and cut their money, you are just going to punish the poor. If we valued education like in east Asia, we would be paying teachers 200. 000 a year and having calssrooms of 5, since we cannot count on any parent involvement.

If any country can kill

Unions it's the US, we are so screwed here in Canada. Teachers make boat loads of money, can't get fired. To get fired here the school board literally had to GOTO COURT there are lawyers involved etc... it's a huge fight between unions and school boards to fire one person. 99% of the time they just get transfered. And yes they get MASSIVE time off. Huge pensions and a CRAZY health plan everything is covered you name it it's covered.

war destroys

to quote from a bumper sticker:
"It will be a great day when the schools get all the money they need, and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
Our economy has enough money to fund schools 10x over, but instead we send our money to foreign lands. Sad.
I know, not quite on topic.

Whoops! Confused maybe?

dmsimmer: "Steve Jobs, a multi-millionaire(billionaire?) who takes billions from our education system, while our teachers take money from their own pockets to pay for pencils, chalk and paper."

Let's put it this way. If Jobs was able to get MORE Macs into the school systems, many of the deadbeat IT support staff required to prop up the sagging Windows environments could be eliminated, thus providing much needed funds for basics such as pencils, chalk and paper. Sadly, I hear too often of these idiot school boards who have gotten a 'sweetheart deal' from Dell, HP or someone else to chuck out the Macs -- totally ignoring the total cost of ownership. And for the Windows world, that immediately starts out as IT support. (I can't but help think of the recent Bouder Valley School District fiasco.) I'd personally like to see our Teachers paid more too, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon as long as we have ill informed, biased and bullheaded school boards flushing good money after bad. I truely feel for our Teachers who are caught in the middle.

Totally wrong!

The state of education in this country cannot improve, or even hope to improve, without a massive change in the culture and the family. You can pay the best teachers in the world a million dollars a year and they will still fail if a child comes from a family and/or culture that does not value education, does not instill respect for teachers, and does not accept personal responsibility for its actions. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink the old cliche goes and it's as true as ever. Current American culture is debased, degenerate, lazy, and feels entitled to anything it wants with out having to work for it or take responsibility for it. The baby boomer generation and its intellectuals have ruined this culture and we have an entire generation now of individuals who believe "entitlement" is the be-all, end-all of life. "Why get an education when I'm entitled to all of life's perks anyway? If I just scream loud enough, protest long enough somebody will give me what I want without working for it."

Jobs is dead wrong and doesn't have a clue about what's wrong with education in this country.

answer

Here's my 2 cents:

Our public education system is failing to teach children how to think.

Instead of actual 'thinking'; students are taught how to 'test' or more simply put, to 'repeat' the information presented as 'learning' on a mulitple choice quiz, which teaches nothing at all to the student.

98% of all work available in the US requires workers who can perform mindless repetitive tasks in exchange for survival. In short any task done by man can be done better if computerized; computers are more accurate teachers and since computers and robotics can out do any human efforts; we need to do more to automate the learning process.

Since what Steve is really saying is 'public school should be replaced with an online wiki-pedia like source code', why stop there?? Why not remove the local school community all together for the virtual community?? Then all students could get an equal footing watching lectures designed to be viewed by thousands of students and teachers; thus adding an a tremendous economic advantage to the system as well as profits. Our higher education institutions are also bogged down with the same brick and morter blues...way too expensive and the material is too quickly dated; both of which can be overhauled by the information age.

Now teachers from all over the country could video there lectures and sell them as Pod Casts or sell them directly.... just think how one inspiring Pod Cast could be used 'many times over' because the subject matter doesn't change or even inviting students to watch another teachers presentation of the same material or re-watched mulitple times until the student 'gets it right'.

Our country is living in the dark ages because we produce to many graduate students who don't have the ability think in modern terms and lack the motivations required to succeed with in our society.

The information age has just begun!!

So... does Steve want to distroy the american institution of schooling?? Or help it change into the future??

If all Humankind knowledge can be 'chained to an electronic database on the internet' why have K-12 school at all? Why not a 24/7 internet based learning portal for everyone?? (why have I not heard of this before??)

Just think how many taxpayer $$$ could be saved!!

Every american kid under 21 should instead be given free laptops every other year and we could all eliminate those property taxes that are killing middle class american families!!

Our society is at a cross roads here; don't expect teachers to do the right thing or even billionaire CEO's; the future will be created instead by the inspirations made today.

Get a clue Steve

We already have schools that can fire teachers. They are called Charter schools and they do no better, and in most cases worse, than public schools. And they take public money away from to public schools to do this. The problem is the lack of a commitment to learn by the families of students attending our schools.

2 different things

Listen, Steve Jobs is talking about making money and the most of you are talking about education matters. I don't like public nor private schools. Just as some have said, "They are told what to think, not how to think". This is only because a teacher can't possibly direct 30 different kids with different interests and behaviours all at the same time. The teacher has been given an impossible job and the students are presented with information they could have learned 2 years ago. Public and private education allows students to be easily influenced with the states' propagandas. Hitler said: "Let me control the textbooks and I will control the country". I personally believe that the parents are responsible for their children and if they can't homeschool then atleast teach your child respect and the importance of information. Sure the teachers can improve but as it stands now. They have been given an impossible job. Go to some african countries and see how they teach there. Far more superior and advanced systems. Not technology wise but educational wise. Money is not the way to go, but respect, a desire to learn and a well read and educated teacher.

Problem with Education

I agree with Jobs that principals lack the flexibility to change their staff; however, are the principles any better than the teachers that they want to fire?

The entire education system is flawed. It is based on a 19th century economic and social system that no longer exists. The nuclear family is the minority. We don't need to go to the fields to bring in the crops; however, our education system is still based on a 9-month calendar.

Pay alone will not create good teachers. New teachers don't leave the profession because of pay, but because of the bureaucracy and lack of institutional support.

Also, eliminate pay to teachers based on college credits, but reward them based on acheivement and improvement. Also, develop peer programs for teachers to learn from each other at a school, district, state, and with the internet, national basis. Empower teachers and reward them based on team effort and achievement to encourage teachers helping each other.

I read awhile ago that the factor that made the biggest difference in a school was the principal in that school. It is there that you should start.

Also, make the Union into a partner for improving our schools, not the enemy. Good teachers don't like lazy ones any more than the parents and students do. The working environment for teachers is abysmal in many school districts.

There are 13,506 school districts in the United States. That's way too many political bodies. Merge them into city and county government and make county and city officials accountable. New York is doing it. LA wants to do it.

What an arrogant @$$!

Jobs is an even bigger @$$ than I had suspected.. he should be lambasting corporate greed, outrageous executive salaries and scandalous perks (stock options anyone?..)

The problem with education isn't the teacher's unions, it is society in general. Parents who are forced to work longer hours to make ends meet, struggling single parents who can't dedicate the time needed to help their children or even supervise them, working multiple jobs; children who are bombarded with TV, internet, commercials, games, cell phones, iPods, etc..to the point that the basics, reading, history, science and math are of no interest to them. The root cause of all this? Corporate greed! It is that simple...

Jobs owes the hard working teachers of this country an apology. They fight an uphill battle against an array of powerful forces. The last thing they need is some greedy corporate goon making baseless accusations.

duarte

I have to agree with you. The underlying issue in education is much larger that the Jobs' statements. The root cause is our society's ills is we are, by and large, caught up in abject greed. Everything starts in the home, but if the 'home' is peoccupied with working an extra 40 hours per week to afford the 'Escalade' in the driveway, well. guess who gets ignored. On the opposite side of the coin, because our society is now BASED on two incomes, how does a single parent deal with this? Many don't. And the victims are the kids. Luckily, my Brother and I survived our ordeal.

Jobs' comments are a popcorn f*** in light of the REAL issues that challenge us.

Administrations

The problem rests with bad leadership. Public entities are controlled by politicians (elected and hired) and without unions teachers would get fired willy-nilly, just for pi--ing off an administrator or the local school board rep. Great school teachers need the distance from politicians that great universities have. Sadly, it is only going to get worse.

Numbers: Teachers (in my district) work ~190 days per year at school (180 with kids). Many also work nights and weekends preparing and grading. Yes, most teachers burn out young. The median teacher salary is ~$48,000, the median Engineer salary is ~$55,000.

mac=good, jobs= idiot

Check out what Wired mag has to say...Life time user of macs, but if you look at the his history, this is par for the course. Go here to digg Wired response to front page;
http://digg.com/tech_news/Wired_Steve_Jobs_Proud_to_Be_Non_Union_goes_off_the_deep_end